REPOST: 3 Ways to Advance Digital Marketing in Your Organization

Embracing digital marketing can be a difficult project to undertake for many traditional companies. ClickZ.com offers the following tips to help companies make digital marketing a more integral part of their organization:

Image Source: clickz.com

These three tips can help you bring your company to the forefront of the digital marketing scene - are you ready?

Digital marketing, with its constant changes and new technologies emerging regularly, is oftentimes a huge initiative to implement for many companies. While some organizations hopped on board early, making the necessary investments in people, technology, and creative thinkers needed to make digital marketing a central part of their go-to-market strategy, others lag behind their industry peers. If you fall into the latter category – or even if you’re just trying to make digital marketing a more integral part of your organization – check out my three tips to help your initiatives gain momentum within your company below:

1. Brief Executives on What Is Possible.

Executives can be your biggest source of momentum for digital marketing. However, before they give you their full endorsement – along with budget and headcount – they have to fully understand the benefits that digital marketing will bring your company.

To ensure you receive their commitment, consider sharing case studies provided by your software vendors or those found in online content searches. Try to include competitive examples of how your industry peers and competitors are deploying digital marketing technology. Also, be sure to include statistics and findings from reports like the IBM Global CMO Study, which will give your executives digestible insight into what their counterparts are doing and thinking. You’ll also need to be prepared to share specific digital marketing programs that you think will help drive revenue and increase customer loyalty. If you’re successful, you might just find a strong ally in the C-suite for what you need to do!

 

2. Educate Teams Outside of the Marketing Department.

Folks outside of your organization are most likely interested in how your marketing initiatives are affecting the company’s bottom line. To provide some insight for them, consider scheduling things like lunch and learns to educate both your peers and leaders of other departments. You might even be able to get them on board enough that they end up contributing content! Or, at the least, they will be more aware of how their schedules can impact what you’re trying to achieve with your digital marketing efforts and be more sympathetic to your needs and accelerated schedule. They may even be able to come up with some interesting ideas for how you can "program-ize" an initiative.

 

3. Rally Around a New Program.

One of the greatest benefits of marketing automation technology is that it gives you the ability to do rule-based communications, allowing you to break out of the manual methods used to segment, query, prepare, and execute traditional email campaigns. While automated programs greatly increase your efficiency and effectiveness, they do not necessarily raise the profile of the transformation that you are undertaking within your marketing team.

However, one of the biggest benefits of a distinct program is that it typically allows you to easily measure program investment and ROI. These programs typically direct customers or prospects to a particular area of your website or a landing page where you gain more information about their specific needs. You’ll then follow up with helpful automated content either in the form of a report or series of helpful content spaced out over days or weeks.

These tips are just a few of the ways you can advance digital marketing in your company to provide the awesome experience your customers deserve. However, there is always more to learn, both from industry experts and your marketing peers.

Mitch Berman is the founder of ZillionTV Corporation and the CEO of Zen Digital Fund. More discussions on digital marketing can be found here.

REPOST: Search “Super Bowl” & See The Best Search Results Page Bing Has Ever Had

Fans can get their regular fix of Super Bowl action through Bing’s search results page specially designed and re-engineered for their viewing pleasure. Read the article below to learn what makes it standout from other search engines tackling the same query.  

Image Source: searchengineland.com

That’s what it looks like if you do a search for “super bowl” on Bing. (You can click the image to see a bigger version if it helps. I’ll be commenting on the numbered items above throughout the article below.)

I know, as a longtime SEO consultant, that I’m supposed to hate all of the content on the page and how far down the “10 blue links” have been pushed and how much traffic sports-related websites are probably losing because there’s so much content and so little need to click to another page … but I think this is the single greatest page of search results I’ve ever seen on Bing. Here’s why:

Left-Side Content

The top of the main search results content block starts with basic game info (#1 on the image above) that, by now, we’d all expect on any search engine. Indeed, Google and Yahoo have very similar boxes.

Bing’s answer box goes way beyond Google and Yahoo, though. It’s got a game prediction from the often correct Bing predictions tool that adds some color to the game matchup. (#2 above) Oh, and there’s an affiliate link for “Tickets” that leads to SeatGeek.com. I can do without that, but whatever.

Then there’s data from Stats LLC showing some of the key players (#3 above) in Sunday’s game, including projections on two “game changers” — Rob Gronkowski and Marshawn Lynch — and season leaders from both the Patriots and Seahawks.

Image Source: searchengineland.com

It’s fantastic.

Below that, the left side of the page finally gets into the news links (#4 above), website links and more — including a block of videos for Super Bowl commercials, even though I didn’t specifically search for commercials. Smart move, in my opinion, because those commercials are one of the main reasons a lot of people watch the game in the first place.

Right-Side Content

Bing’s search results page gets even more interesting over on the right side of the page.

It starts with a big block of data (#5 above) from the Bing Snapshot product. In this case, Bing’s telling us how to watch the game — including a link to NBC’s free, online stream. (Google Trends tells us that searches for “super bowl live stream” are way up at the moment.) Bing even tells us who’s singing the national anthem and at halftime. Great touches.

A little farther down the Snapshot content is a series of four factoids about each team (#6 above). It’s got a quote from each team, an “X factor” player, a “Question mark” and a “How they’ll beat” the other team statement.

Image Source: searchengineland.com

Here’s what’s interesting about this: Someone at Bing has written this content specifically for the search results page. I’ve asked Bing to tell more about this, but they haven’t answered yet. But I know this: Do searches for the exact phrases in this section — like “Will All-Pro TE Rob Gronkowski get open against Seattle’s Legion of Boom secondary?” — and you won’t find them anywhere else on the web in that exact wording. Bing credits the Snapshot data to Wikipedia and ESPN, but neither have the exact phrase “Will WRs Doug Baldwin and Jermaine Kearse be able to get open downfield against New England’s formidable CBs?” That’s original text on Bing’s part.

After that, the right side has things like related searches, related images, a couple ads and it ends with a recent Super Bowl-related tweet (#7 above).

What About Google?

Google’s search results page for the same query this morning is nothing like Bing’s. It’s kind of shocking that such a popular cultural event only gets a basic Onebox treatment on Google, followed by the standard news and website links.

Google isn’t even showing video or image results for this query.

Final Thoughts

As someone who publishes a couple websites, I’m normally not a fan of seeing search engines put so much content above search results like this — especially at the expense of online publishers providing that content. My U2 website is no doubt starting to lose traffic now that both Google and Bing are showing song lyrics right in the search results. Ugh.

So I understand why many of our readers won’t like the kind of search results page that Bing is presenting here for “super bowl,” but I like it. I think this is an amazing search results page. The best I’ve ever seen on Bing.

Zen Digital Fund’s Mitch Berman is a respected digital marketing strategist who is a great inspiration for anyone interested in carving his own niche in technology and media. Follow this Twitter account for more cutting-edge perspectives on the current issues and trends on media, technology, and digital marketing.